The first product to take a look at is the USB 3.0 enclosure which ships with a USB cable and manual in addition to the tool free USB HDD enclosure. It is a very simple product at a very low price and is small enough to stick in a laptop bag without having an unsightly bulge. The base model is currently $14 on Amazon and for an extra $5 you can get one which supports USB Attached SCSI Protocol to allow an SSD to hit full speed when installed in the enclosure. The USB 3.0 cable is a dual male cable; no proprietary plugs or breakable adapters needed to make this work and as enough power can be provided over USB that this is the only cable you will need. The only compatibility issue concerns the relatively uncommon 12mm 2.5" drives which will not fit, 9.5mm and 7mm are both acceptable and there is a removable cushion to keep your 7mm drive nice and snug.

When you use Linux you have a choice as to which file system you wish to use, a choice that never occurs to most Windows users but can spark an argument every bit as vicious as the eternal debate over EMACS versus VIM versus whichever text editor you prefer. There has not been much SSD benchmarking done on alternate files systems until now, Phoronix has benchmarked the Intel 530 series SSD in numerous configurations on Btrfs, EXT4, XFS, and F2FS. With four of the 120GB model available they were able to test the speed of the drives in RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, and 1+0. There is obviously still some compatibility issues as some tests failed to run in certain configurations but overall these drives performed as expected. While the results did not vary widely it is worth reading through their article if you plan on building a high speed storage machine which will run Linux.

Since we reviewed the Intel SSD DC P3700, many of you have been drooling over the idea of an 18-channel NVMe PCIe SSD, even more so given that the P3500 variant was to launch at a $1.50/GB target price. It appears we are getting closer to that release, as the P3500 has been appearing on some web sites in pre-order or out of stock status.

Today Intel refreshed their Datacenter Series of SSDs, specifically their DC S3500. We have reviewed this model in the past. It uses the same controller that is present in the S3700, as well as the SSD 730 Series (though it is overclocked in that series).

The full line of Intel Datacenter SSDs (minus the P3700). DC S3500 is just right of center.

Todays refresh includes higher capacities to the S3500, which now include 1.2TB and 1.6TB on the hign end of capacity. This suggests that Intel is stacking 20nm dies as many as 8 to a package. IOPS performance sees a slight penalty at these new higher capacities, while maximum sequentials are a bit higher due to the increased die count.

Also announced was an M.2 version of the S3500. This packaging is limited to only a few capacity points (80GB, 120GB, 340GB), and is p;rimarily meant for applications where data integrity is critical (i.e. ATM's, server boot partitions, etc).

A standard press blast was unavailable, but full specs are listed after the break.

Introduction, Specifications and Packaging

Introduction:

G.Skill is likely better known for their RAM offerings, but they have actually been in the SSD field since the early days. My first SSD RAID was on a pair of G.Skill Flash SSDs. While they were outmaneuvered by the X25-M, they were equipped with SLC flash, and G.Skill offered them at a significantly lower price than the Samsung OEM units they were based on.

Since those early days of flash, G.Skill has introduced a few additional models but has not been known as a major player in the SSD market. That is set to change today, with their introduction of the Phoenix Blade PCIe SSD:

If you're eager to know what is inside or how it works, I'll set your mind at ease with this brief summary. The Phoenix Blade is essentially an OCZ RevoDrive 350, but with beefier specs and improved performance. The same SandForce 2281 controllers and Toshiba flash are used. The difference comes in the form of a smaller form factor (half height vs. full height PCIe), and the type of PCIe to SATA bridge chip used. More on that on the disassembly page.

Introduction

Given that we are anticipating a launch of the Samsung 850 EVO very shortly, it is a good time to back fill on the complete performance picture of the 850 Pro series. We have done severalfullcapacityroundups of various SSD models over the past months, and the common theme with all of them is that as the die count is reduced in lower capacity models, so is the parallelism that can be achieved. This effect varies based on what type of flash memory die is used, but the end result is mostly an apparent reduction in write performance. Fueling this issue is the increase in flash memory die capacity over time.

There are two different ways to counteract the effects of write speed reductions caused by larger capacity / fewer dies:

This week, Toshiba introduced 4TB and 5TB hard drives to the consumer space. Coming from Toshiba's Digital Products Division, the new drives are part of the company's PH3*00U-1I72 series and are the first four and five Terabyte 3.5" consumer hard drives sporting 7200 RPM spindle speeds (though enterprise and NAS focused drives have been available prior to these new drives).

The new 4TB and 5TB HDDs are 3.5-inch desktop drives with four and five platters respectively. Toshiba is using Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) and Tunnel Magneto-Resistive (TMR) technologies to hit 1TB per platter. The 7,200 RPM spindle speed allows Toshiba to hit an average seek time of 10.5ms, and the 128MB of cache stores frequently accessed data. The new drives are paired with a SATA 3 6Gbps interface. Toshiba has included NCQ (Native Command Queuing) support along with shock sensors and ramp on/off loading safety features.

The new drives are compatible with Linux, Mac OSX 10.6, and Windows 7 or newer. Both the 4TB PH3400U-1I72 and 5TB PH3500U-1I72 come with a three year manufacturer warranty.

The 4TB drive has an MSRP of $299 while the 5TB model has an MSRP of $399. Fortunately for digital hoarders, the drives are currently selling at prices below the MSRP. The 5TB model is being priced around $320 while the 4TB model is priced between $220 and $240 at the time of writing depending on your retailer of choice.

If you own a Samsung 840 SSD, it appears that after much repeated and vocal pressure, Samsung has acknowledged the slow down also affects your drive. We're not talking about the EVO or the Pro, this is the original pure TLC model that launched (the EVO is a TLC+SLC cache hybrid while the Pro is all MLC). Here's the quote from Samsung, via Computer Base:

What? You can't read German? Neither can we, but paraphrasing from the poor quality translation from several online tools, we deduce that Samsung has acknowledged the issue on the 840, and is working on a solution as quickly as possible. This is similar verbiage to the statement issued for the 840 EVO acknowledgement.

** Update **

Thanks to Zyhmet, who commented shortly after posting, here's a human translation:

Because of the feedback we got, we realized that, accessing specific data with units of SSD 840 could lead to lower reading performance.

For the moment our experts are systematically examining the SSD-units with different system environments and we are working on a solution as fast as possible.

Due to different technologies the PRO-series (840 PRO and 850 PRO) are not affected.

Samsung

** End update **

Side note - of those who have used the 840 EVO Performance Restoration Tool, a few have reported an issue cropping up. The error manifests as a SMART data misreporting error:

What's odd about this error is that it was present on some of our pre-production test samples (firmware EXT0AB0Q), and was corrected once we updated those samples to the first retail build (EXT0BB0Q). The image above was an actual screen shot taken during our temperature-dependency testing of the slow down issue. While none of our samples had the issue return when updating all the way to the performance restored firmware, one of those updates did corrupt the Master File Table, rendering the majority of the SSD inaccessible. While we have seen no other reports of corrupted partitions, severalusers noticed the SMART reporting issue after updating. It's odd to see this sort of a regression with firmware updates, in that a bug fixed in the initial shipping firmware has returned (for some) in a subsequent update. If you've updated your 840 EVO with their Performance Restoration Tool, it may be a good time to check your SMART attributes. If you see the error above, please leave us a note in the comments.

Circling back to the slow down issue - given that it is present in two TLC-based SSDs from Samsung, one has to wonder if this issue exists in other Samsung TLC SSDs as well. Here's the list of potentials (thanks to an anonymous comment on a prior story):

840 EVO - 19nm TLC

840 - 21nm TLC

PM841 - 21nm TLC

PM851 - 21nm TLC (some SKUs)

845DC EVO - 19nm TLC

PM843 - 21nm TLC

PM853T - 21nm TLC

We have several questions out to Samsung on these issues, but to date they have not been answered. More to follow as we wait for an official (English) response.

In conjunction with Dell World, LiteOn has announced their new EP1 M.2 PCIe SSD:

Designed primarily for enterprise workloads and usage, the EP1 sports impressive specs for such a small device. Capacities are 480 and 960GB, random 4k IO is rated at 150k/44k (R/W), sequentials are as high as 1.5GB/sec, and max latencies are in the 30-40 us range (this spec is particularly important for enterprise OLTP / transactional database workloads). Given the enterprise specs, power loss protection is a given (and you can see the capacitors in the upper right of the above photo). Here are the full specs:

It should be noted that larger PCIe-based SSDs are rated for greater than the 1 drive write per day of the EP1, but they are also considerably larger (physically) when compared to the M.2 EP1. As an additional aside, the 960GB capacity is a bit longer than you might have seen so far in the M.2 form factor. While the 480GB model is a familiar 2280 (80mm long), the 960GB model follows the 22110 form factor (110mm long). The idle power consumption seems a bit high, but enterprise devices are typically tuned for instantaneous response over idle wattage.

In addition to the above, we saw the 1TB model listed for $500 at Frys, and also found the 500GB for $264 at ProVantage. The shipping date on the Frys listing was initially November 3rd, but that has since shifted to November 24th, presumably due to an influx of orders.

We'll be publishing a full capacity roundup on the 850 Pro in anticipation of the 850 EVO launch, which based on these leaks is imminent.